Entries tagged with health

Even though I frequently talk with people from pharmacies on the phone I'm a little exasperated with my own pharmacy, because they apparently ran out of room on the label and so my name reads Rosemar. Even after I told them my name is actually Rosemary they still kept referring to me verbally as Rosemar. I had to avoid facepalming. At least I got my medicine. My insurance also decided to give me 3 months' worth at once (which they informed me of through a letter they sent to my parents' house even though I corrected that *sigh* but at least I got it) so I think my friends will be very confused if they come over and see 3 packs of birth control in the medicine cabinet. That's also why I refer to it as a "hormonal medication" since technically that is what it's doing since I don't need it for the other reason people use it. The fact that I actually do use it for the reason it frequently got prescribed to women who needed it but weren't able to get it back in the Bad Old Days is not lost on me, and kind of funny considering how my mom's family historically has supported Planned Parenthood.

Also I keep forgetting when Boston Pride is. I thought it was this week, but I was off by a week. I'll most likely only be able to attend the end of the Parade on Saturday, but I'll see what I can do during the week.

Allergies have been kicking my ass, and no wonder since they're leaving a visible yellow layer on everything around here. And I can tell because I've been fucking up more than usual at work, and when you do you have to sign a form acknowledging the fuckup and all that. Between Memorial Day and today I had three of them. Oy. But I only have one more weekday of work this week at least.

I think I also impressed the people there because my lunch today was some leftover soba noodles with peanut sauce, but before I put them in the microwave it occurred to me that I should probably check that no one had a peanut allergy since it's a communal microwavev. I just suddenly imagined some of the sauce getting in there and some poor person who's allergic having a reaction if they put their own stuff in there, so I checked and no one did that we knew of. I still wiped the inside down just to be safe. Maybe that was overly paranoid, but I figured it was worth asking.

I continue to be impressed at how much I'm both enjoying this new job and at how good I am at it. I was not expecting either of those things, but whaddhya know, that's how it's worked out. They gave me a brief evaluation of the last few days and told me some things I need to work on (most of which I already knew about) but they said overall I'm doing very well.

They've been having me be plugged in with various other people so they can listen to what I'm doing and help me out if I need it. Eventually I'll be on my own, but I do like feeling like I'm not completely on my own, and as I've said my last job basically threw me in feet first and told me to figure it out on my own. The guy today was very nice and we eventually got talking about nerdy stuff between calls. Near the end of the day we also had a few instances where he told me to do something and I then said what he just told me out loud to the caller, which I called an "I, [state your name]" error. Oh well. I can tell that I definitely like being in a faster-paced environment than my old job, it goes a lot quicker and I feel more challenged mentally.

It also means that, ironically, these days I'm probably using my higher pitched professional voice than my regular, talking to someone normally voice. I was explaining to the guy I was working with today that there is a difference, since even if it's not obvious to someone listening speaking with that voice just feels different. I know I sit up straighter, for one, and it's yet another area where the radio work unexpectedly comes in handy. I was even told in my evaluation that my projection and enunciation are very good, and that's why.

I'm also trying to get back into going to the gym, so I'm breaking myself back into that. I can definitely tell that I was a bit out of practice, but that'll go away once I get used to it again.

Have that "someone tied weights to my limbs" feeling again today. Also had it yesterday and barely did anything as a result. I can't tell if it's allergies, a reaction to my new medication, or if it has something to do with how it's suddenly hot. Considering I also have a headache I suspect allergies, but I'll give my doctor a call if it doesn't go away.

The good news is that I haven't seen any ants since I put those traps out, so those seem to have worked.

I think I might be coming down with something, since it was even harder to get up than usual and it feels like someone filled my limbs with lead when I wasn’t looking. Might just be the seasonal allergy crap and something piggybacking off it. Although I'm doing better than one of my friends, since his nose has been bleeding on and off for a couple days now. I told him he should probably see a doctor about that (and resisted making a snarky comment about how women don't tend to whine as much as he does when they bleed for several days at a time).

I also had a dream where a red-crowned crane showed up in my parents' backyard, and I was trying to get a photograph of it. Even in the dream I knew how improbable it was that a crane native to Asia would show up in New England. This was interesting since my great-grandmother did a painting of red-crowned cranes that's in my parents' living room, and she's a definite presence in our lives even though she died before I was born. I'm hoping it's a good sign.

Oh, and yet another nurse commented that the veins on my arms are very visible, which made her happy even though they didn't do any blood work today. I've probably heard variants on that half a dozen times from different health people.

Well, I think I've solved one mystery. Including why I've been a bit of a raging bitch lately.

A few months back I went in to get a blood test because I occasionally get periods of low blood sugar, even when I've eaten things that logically shouldn't cause it, and with my family history we wanted to make sure it wasn't due to me developing diabetes. The tests were negative and I showed no signs of developing it, and we figured there must be another reason, so they told me to keep track of it.

Well, I have, and I think I figured it out. Because since I've been tracking it, I've seen that it tends to happen right around the time I ovulate. And apparently that's a fairly common thing that might mean I have low progesterone. When I was a teenager I occasionally got really bad ovarian cysts, so it would line up.

I've been looking up OBGYNs in the area, and there's one right down the street covered under my insurance and she has good reviews, so I'll give her a call later. Plus I'm about due to got to an OBGYN anyway, since it's been a few years. They're closed for today, but I'll give them a call tomorrow.

I know some people (no one on here, don't worry) think I'm overreacting when I say that the perfumes in most laundry detergent make me itch and that I have to be really careful about cosmetics and soaps to make sure I don't expose myself to them.

But really, I'm not. Even though I use hypoallergenic stuff on my own clothes, just being in a laundromat or even the detergent aisle at a store makes me itch, and I'm at home now after washing my clothes and still feeling it.

I might take an antihistamine to try and calm it down. There might also be allergens in the air that are making it act up.

Besides the pink-eye (which apparently no one but me has really noticed) I seem to be at about 90% in terms of recovery from last week's illness. This was the sickest I'd been in a couple years, so I'm glad this seems to be ending. Though it figures that my last undergrad semester would include a significant illness, because that's just my kind of luck. But I'm glad that I did decide to come home for the weekend, since we saw a production of a local theater group and it was just good to recharge. I can only take so much of the city before I start to go bonkers, and the last time I was out here was in August, so I was overdo.

I also got my hair trimmed for the first time since about March, and taking the split ends off really does help. I think I'm still gonna let it grow a little bit, maybe to the point that I can braid it. The hairdresser was complimenting me on the curls, which is the primary reason I'm growing it out. I used to try to straighten it, but I'll just let it do what it wants. The older I get the less I want to spend time fighting with it.

I also confirmed something that I'd thought for a while, mainly that I've dropped about 10 pounds since the beginning of the summer. I don't have a scale at my apartment, so when I said "10 pounds" it was a guess, but turns out I was more or less spot on. One of the plans for coming out here was to try and get some new clothes since some of my old stuff doesn't fit right anymore (like one pair of pants which quite literally almost fell down when I tried them on again after a while) but I was pretty unsuccessful at our local JC Penny's except for some new bras to replace ones that had worn out. In the past I've noticed that Penny's pants don't sit quite right on me, and that happened yet again. It's also always a little awkward for me to shop for stuff because proportionally I have short legs and a very long waist, so even though I'm not technically petite in terms of height I need to wear petite pants, so it's like I have the upper and lower bodies of two different people. Most people don't tend to notice that until I point it out, but it makes shopping a pain.

The other problem with Penny's seems to be that most of their stuff is aimed at women who are older than I am, and at my age it's a delicate balance between not dressing too young while also not dressing too old. I think their stuff tends to run large too, since I kept having to get smaller stuff than I was expecting. I used to be a medium in terms of shirts, but those looked enormous on me. And to be slightly vain, I want to show off the curves, I don't want to cover them up, but also retain a certain level of class (which is to say I don't like walking around with my boobs hanging out). When I was a teenager I was a lot less self confident, but I'm done with that.

I have been anxious about how Mari is doing without me, though she has K there and he would've called me if there was a problem. This must be what parents feel like when they leave their kids with other people. I have a feeling that later today when I get home Mari will either jump on me and meow and me for leaving her alone or do something ridiculous. I've never left her alone for such a long amount of time, but I know we both have to get used to it.

In addition to the massive cold/flu/whatever that incapacitated me from Wednesday to Friday and made me miss a day of work and school, I now seem to have pink-eye! I had it once when I was a kid and now it's shown up again.

Oh, and I have this in addition to coughing out the remains from the earlier illness. Lovely. This seems to be the bacterial type so it'll probably resolve without us having to do anything, but it's yet another thing wrong with me in a week full of them.

Earlier this week I was talking to a coworker and he mentioned a bug going around that he said was like getting hit by a truck since you felt fine one minute and then a few minutes later realized that you couldn't get up. It's not far from the truth.

I think when I edit my radio show's MP3 I'll actually be able to hear myself deteriorating, since I felt mostly okay at the start and by the end had just enough strength to get some cough syrup at a pharmacy, get home and flop down, and now I'm running a fever. I managed to sleep for six hours and feel somewhat better, but I might actually take a sick day tomorrow from work, which would only the second in as many years.

Well, I think I've proven pretty definitively that the dizziness I was experiencing a few months back that made me go in for a blood test (the results of which showed that absolutely nothing was wrong with me, and they were quite thorough) is not only hormone related, but a very specific type of hormones, since I'm only just now experiencing it again after being free of it for a while.

Had a very toothy day. First I went to the dentist, then the orthodontist. The dentist was very proud of me for mostly cutting soda out of my diet, but I have to go back tomorrow because I managed to get a chip in the covering of the tooth I chipped a few years ago. I'm not quite sure how that happened, though it may have been when I was on the T with my cheek against the glass and it stopped suddenly so I got smacked in that part of my mouth. Either way I need to get it filled, and one of my fillings has worn out normally so they have to fix it. Apparently if I put it off I risk having to get a root canal. Agh.

I was a bit anxious about the orthodontist since I got a chip in my upper retainer, due to the cat knocking it off my desk and me stepping on it, but they said that I can keep using it since it still does what it's supposed to do, and they didn't want to superglue it in case the adhesive got too weak, since then I would risk swallowing the broken piece in my sleep. I was glad we didn't have to replace it, especially since I've had it so long and theoretically I won't need it much longer now that my wisdom teeth are out.

I also, uh, made myself into a pony. I regret nothing. The hilarious part is I actually have close to 20 year old My Little Ponies, so this has precedent. So yeah, the ponies got me too, but when I looked up some episodes of that show it was actually really good. And seeing the expression on my dad's face when I explained what a Brony was had to be one of the best faces I've seen him make. I think I'm masculine enough to count as an honorary Brony, if only in the sense that people probably wouldn't expect me to like them. I also went and changed my Steam ID to "Fluttershy" and when I dominated one of my friends in TF2 his reaction was "Ow my masculinity!"

So the other day at my gym I decided to try my luck and go on one of the chin-up machines they have there. I saw a bunch of guys on it before me, so I figured, why not?

Today my back is reminding me why not. Ow. I didn't even manage to do one and just kind of hung there for a while, flailing pathetically, and all I got for my trouble was at least one pulled muscle in my shoulders. It's already feeling better, but that was embarrassing.

Next time I'll try to put the bravado aside. Although to their credit none of the other people there made fun of me, which was a feat considering I probably looked quite silly hanging there, basically a live-action version of this comic.

One thing I've found about me is that to get me to save money it's best if I never see it, so I have transfers go to savings accounts at various times. I just found out I could do that with my credit card, so I just set up a similar thing for that. Since I've had to use said card lately due to the cell phone disaster it'll help me pay it off and be less painful than having to shell out a payment once a month, and get it paid off faster.

I also need to wash and change my sheets today, and I've having the comforter air out on the fire avoider since it's been in storage. Hopefully that'll help get rid of the musty smell.

And I'm glad to say the allergies have mostly calmed down, though I'm still coughing. So I actually sound worse even though I'm getting better. Huh.

Guess what? I can actually breathe and talk (mostly)! This is a definite improvement from Tuesday when I could do neither. On the other hand half of my office is out sick today, and D didn't go into work today either. I think this is a combination of allergies and something going around, though on the allergy front something must have bloomed and just bulldozed those of us with pollen allergies, since there are reports that our pollen count (even in the city) is through the roof.

My hands also keep sweating, which is unusual for me, and I was really sweating last night. I might install the air conditioner in the living room this weekend, since it should be enough to cool the entire apartment. Thomas probably won't be too happy that I'm going to be blocking off one of his favorite lookout spots, but oh well.